Matt Margolis is predicting that Apple will be switching from DDR3 to DDR4 RAM for future MacBooks this year, suggesting faster performance and improved battery-life.

One of Apple’s RAM manufacturer. Micron, says that DDR3 bandwidth tops out at around 17GB/s, while DDR4 aims to double this by 2015:

Since the introduction of the iPhone, the industry has responded with an evolutionary transition from 2.6 GB/s LPDDR1, to 8.5 GB/s LPDDR2, to 17 GB/s LPDDR3, the technology currently is powering today’s high-end devices in volume production. DRAM bandwidth has roughly doubled with each generation to keep pace with demand.

The next generation of low-power DRAM (LPDRAM)—also known as LPDDR4—addresses these constraints by doubling the bandwidth of LPDDR3 while maintaining power neutrality. For example, LPDDR4 targets 34 GB/s of total bandwidth for a x64 memory subsystem, doubling the bandwidth target from LPDDR3

The company has not given specific targets for improved battery-life, but says that it aims to reduce power consumption in both active and standby modes.

Margolis suggests that DDR4 RAM may also make it into future iPhones and iPads.

Nice to know that improvements to power consumption by RAM are coming in the near future. Just like a more efficient processor, this is one of those upgrades that instantly improves battery life with all other factors remaining equal. They don’t happen often, and when they do, its nice.

Combine this with the other report we heard about Apple’s new display partner (?) where they were working on lower power consumption displays….we could dramatic battery life improvements on iOS without any changes to battery at all.

The iPhone world anxiously awaits an iPhone that has iPad-level battery life.

I seriously doubt it will happen this year for the MacBooks unless Intel has more surprises coming soon.

Don’t forget, you need a compatible Intel CPUs to use DDR4 and there aren’t any low-power chips coming with DDR4 this year. Only the Haswell-E 8-core Extreme desktop CPU will have this DDR4 support this year.

I suspect this will happen in Macbook with the upcoming 14nm Broadwell CPUs , which has been delayed to ’15.